


if brokenness is a work of art, this must be my masterpiece

by bountifulsilences



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, no one dies but suicide attempt is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-18
Updated: 2018-01-18
Packaged: 2019-03-06 12:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13411668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bountifulsilences/pseuds/bountifulsilences
Summary: "Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you have new people that care for you? That love you endlessly? Has it occurred to you that someone who left has finally returned, despite all the odds against him?""Nobody does Buck. It's a fact I've accepted a long time ago. You should as well.""Liar, that's not the truth.""Yes, it is.""No. It isn't. Because I can name one person who would do anything for you without a second thought. I can say their name with confidence because I know it's the truth.""Who?""Me."





	if brokenness is a work of art, this must be my masterpiece

**Author's Note:**

> when feeling depressed write sad fics! it's cathartic. 
> 
> this sad mess is all over the place and hastily edited. let's hope it doesn't suck too much. if you manage to get through all of this give yourself a pat on the back from me because you deserve a medal for such perseverance. 
> 
> hope u enjoy this regardless of everything I've said so far because u deserve it! :)

"What were you thinking?" Bucky questioned; voice void, eyes blank and face paler than a sheet of white paper.

He was stood by the door, arms limp against his side- Steve was lingering beside the large windows. The air between the two was thick enough to suffocate and none advanced to change it. Allowed the charged atmosphere to ooze into their adrenaline wired bodies just to maintain some hope. Some reason.

When he received no answer, apart from a prolonged silence that stretched itself to its demise, did Bucky glance at him, permitted himself to steal a look at the broken man. "What were you thinking?"

"I don't know."

"Bullshit," he called immediately, tone hard and defensive.

Steve’s eyes flashed in shame and the moons gaze highlighted the discomfort on the length of his cheekbones. His protective intertwined arms stiffened and from the wall, his vision trudged to his best friend, indulging in a glimpse.

Raindrops descended at that moment, littering the window with its water and blurring reality from them. Steve felt the first stitch come undone.

"You wanted the spear to hit you," Bucky stated, empty and hollow and so unfamiliar that Steve hated the very sound of it.

Regardless, continuing to look at Bucky, he said with nonchalance, "I wouldn't mind it," as though it was a sufficient reply. A satisfactory explanation that would cure the coldness. It didn't.

"How can you say that?" Was what Bucky asked, revealing his disbelief and abundant confusion. His absolute fear. "How could you?"

"Because I shouldn't be here," Steve snapped, arms falling to his side with a spasm of energy. "Everyone I've ever cared for is either dead or has left me. I should never have come here. I should have joined them all decades ago!"

Stepping forward instinctively, Bucky approached him, halting at the steps between them. His face stoic.

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you have new people that care for you? That love you endlessly? Has it occurred to you that someone who left has finally returned, despite all the odds against him?" The stark contrast between his emotive voice and emotionless face deterred Steve, cutting the second string of his stitch.

He fought the urge to look away.

The rain pelting around them laboured, hitting the tower like bullets. Their eyes were locked. Tense.

"Nobody does Buck. It's a fact I've accepted a long time ago. You should as well." His words were sharp and icy, transmitting a bitter dejection that he couldn't prevent. Or perhaps, didn't want to stop.

"Liar," Bucky told him, harbouring a careful balance of conviction and possible desperation. "It's not the truth."

"Yes, it is."

"No. It isn't. Because I can name one person who would do anything for you without a second thought. I can say their name with confidence because I know it's the truth."

"Who?" He asked defensively, uncertainty plaguing his every breath.

Maintaining their vigilantly crumbling facades, they paused and searched each other’s eyes. For what? Steve didn’t know, but he would never run from a fight. Their eyes battled one another.

Bucky was the first to look away.

"Me," Bucky whispered, looking exposed beneath his scrutiny, like a piece of bacteria under a microscope. "Because I do, you oblivious moron."

He began to pace, weaving self-assured through the debris of their shared past and Steve’s threatening present, his presence almost soothing. Steve didn't know how to feel, had forged the belief that he couldn’t. Staring at Bucky, he wasn’t too sure.

"I love you so much that I was stupid to even think that I could trust you. To assume that you'd be the safest out of all of us," Bucky all but spat, refusing to peek at the man he was addressing. "Turns out all this time, I should have been focusing on you. Should have been making sure that you weren't doing some stupid self-sacrificial crap that might kill you."

"Bucky, I-" Steve interjected. He didn't stop to listen.

"I noticed the signs you know," he admitted truthfully. "I realised the pattern of you jumping ahead of us all, getting injured all the time, volunteering every- single- time that hell I thought I was imagining it! But still, I couldn't see."

He stopped walking and stared at the floor, allowing a quietness between them to grow, allowing the rain to fill in the missing pieces. Sighing, his eyes closed, and he shook his head, seemingly in despondent acceptance.

"How could I have been so damn blind?" The sky rumbled with the same ferocity as his rant. "That I couldn't even see you're hurting."

His voice silenced, beaten down by its own self-hate and annoyance that he ultimately surrendered and finally peered at him. Steve felt the third stitch snap and cut through his heart. Bucky looked as torn up as he felt.

"You love me?" He couldn't terminate the hope that brought the words to life.

Bucky shook his head, dejection shimmering whenever the moonlight reached him, chuckling sadly. "More than you can even imagine."

The confession wheeled to Steve’s heart, bumping against the doubts and fear, tumbling into the safety of his mutual love, and burrowed alongside his yet to be said confession. If he would say it.

Yet the weight of desolation in Bucky’s words reminded him that said feelings were unwanted. Undesirable in relation to him. Unwelcome. A poisoned blade of reality pierced the brimming hope. He didn't want to love Steve.

"Oh," he uttered, eyes dragging against the floor as he processed the weight of what Bucky told him. "I'm sorry."

Bucky’s gaze turned bizarre, transforming hysterically at his apology. "He's sorry. You're sorry."

"I know you don't want to love me. What else can I say?" He snapped offensively.

"I don't know! I don't know because I'm just as lost as you damn it." He breathed heavy, hands scrambling to his hair and roaming through the weeds. "I wish I wasn't to save us both the trouble but I’m not. Fuck."

Steve abruptly shun his eyes away from him, angled his body to face the window and hide Bucky’s wilting demeanour using the darkness engulfing the room. Rain splattered urgently at the transparent glass, thunder rumbling above it.

It was obvious that he despised the feelings that he possessed for Steve. He didn't need to punish himself further by staring at the blatant disgust. It was overwhelming.

"I didn't expect you to fall for me too. I would have avoided it if I knew."

Water rolled down his reflection. The fourth stitch split in the middle and he felt truth began to pool out of his distraught wounds. Hurriedly, he tried to tighten the thread holding him together but to no avail, he failed.

"You-" Bucky inhaled a quick gulp of air, "you love me too?"

He nodded stiffly. "Yes. I do."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Bucky enquired, eager for his response. "If you did then we could have resolved this ages ago!"

"Resolved what Buck?" he spat, toxic thought finally absconding his system. "You still won't want to love me. I'll still be an incompetent ally, a blast from a past you wish you could avoid and everything would have remained the same."

"But I do want to love you," he offered, a taken back by Steve’s outburst. "I never said I didn't."

He closed his eyes, trying to block out the raw innocence and honesty. It would make everything much easier. "You didn't deny it."

"Deny what?"

Steve didn't reply. Purposely, Bucky moved over to him, stood in between him and the window like a barrier and bored his eyes into his. Steve saw electricity sparkle in the depths of his iris. "Tell me, what?"

"It doesn't matter-" he tried but Bucky refused to hear any of his pessimism, interrupting his incoming rejection.

"The hell it does! You love me, and I love you. It matters as much as anything."

"We can't be together, Bucky!" he exclaimed, voice loud and booming, startling both into a tormented and unhinged silence.

He looked at him with a pained impression. Steve shielded his eyes from him.

"Why not?"

"I want to love you, but I don't know how," he confessed, a truth heavier than admitting his unnerving love. "I can't be who you need me to be. I'm just not that person."

Bucky gripped his shirt, directing his eyes back to his determined ones. "I don't want you to change, Steve. I fell in love with this you. Not a perfect one that doesn't exist. Or the one I can’t remember. Why can't you see that?"

Steve knew why he couldn't. Because his vision was contaminated and tainted by all the hardships and paranoia. His perception was distorted, and nothing was exempt from it. Not even Bucky. God, it hurt.

He craved Bucky’s vibrancy. His youthful exuberance. His bright, shielding light that overcame the dilapidating darkness, that in turn was ruining him. These days he couldn't sleep. Couldn't eat. Couldn't even breathe.

But he made it bearable. He made the suffering worth it with one sarcastic remark or acceptance of the plague. Amongst the weed, decay, and blackness, he was the sole sunflower, repressing the angsty weather and bearing light. Steve couldn't let him slip through his fingers like sand. Not again. Yet he didn't know how to cherish him.

The pages had been torn from his tattered book, ripped out before he could read them, and he didn't know how to rewrite their contents on the remaining sheets. Out of ink. Experience. Knowledge. It was excruciating.

"I’m not what you need right now." He exhaled, trying hard not to react negatively. "You’re getting better, I can see it on your face that you are and I just. I don’t want to be the storm that sinks your ship. Not this time."

Bucky’s irises dimmed. Steve was lost at sea. Patching up the cracks and leaks with tape. Travelling alone on his planks of wood, prevailing through the destructive storms, and trying so desperately to stay afloat; Steve lived through it all.

He was forced to age before his time, acquired the wisdom of a saint at a young age and even then, always made the wrong decisions. Plunging his tiresome body to the floor was his past and uncertain present, his mistakes and scepticism all which sprawled on his deteriorating physique like boulders made of steel. Steve was only 26 but had bared witness to horrific crimes, committed unspeakable tasks to protect livelihoods and most importantly: flew away like ashes from burnt wood piece by piece.

"What do you mean ‘not this time’? There hasn’t been a time before," Bucky asked, trying to catch his eyes. "Are you- are you talking about the train?"

Steve nodded in assent, shameful. Pivoting so his back was facing the streaming raindrops and the man who meant everything to him, he vividly recalled the plunge, the miniature trip as he tried to hold onto Bucky, footing weak, and the disgusting regret when the rail Bucky was clinging to fell.

All he had to do was hold on for Bucky a little longer- unintentionally his hands formed a fist and squeezed before they relaxed- but he failed him when it meant the most.

"All I had to do was hold on." He sighed, rubbing his eyes with a sudden exhaustion that weighed his bones to the ground, forcing his surrender. He refrained the white flag from raising. Peggy’s words drifted in his mind, but he tossed them to the side, unable to hear it. “All I had to do, was hold on. And I didn’t.”

"Steve,” Bucky started but quickly halted, reason interrupting him before he could say anymore.

"I know," Steve responded sadly, as the rain obliterated the window. Absently, he began to question how the glass was still intact. How it was surviving under the intense situation.

"I should’ve done more, be more for you. After Azzano- after everything and I wasn’t. When you needed me the most I fucking- I wasn’t enough." Involuntarily his eyes closed, and he released his tight grip on the lifebuoy, drifting willingly into the turbulent waves. There was nothing left for him to admit. "And after that I still tried to find even though you didn’t want to be because I’m so damn selfish and.”

“And what? Hm? Finish the sentence,” Bucky demanded, but he shook his head, trying to ignore the piercing gaze on his back and the second to last stitch snapping. He was critical now, almost completely undone.

“I can’t,” he said in a whisper, though it boomed over the patter outside.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because?”

He didn’t reply. Looming over him was the heartache and the guilt and the betrayal of a century, all lined up to dismantle him bit by bit. He could handle the beating from them, but not from Bucky. Decades later, Bucky was still his soft spot.

“Jesus Christ…” he heard Bucky say, a sigh expelled from him.

He stared at the floor, hoping for the reaction to be painless and quick. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take.

“Steve, there was nothing you could have done to save me,” Bucky said earnestly. Steve’s stitch tore like an earthquake separating land, and he shook his head in denial. “I promise you that from my position there was nothing. Absolutely nothing could’ve have saved me then, not even an angel. I-I felt the bar weaken and before you could even reach out I knew it was going to break. How can you put that weight on your shoulders?”

“How? How? Bucky while I was in the ice for 70 Goddamn years you were with Hydra being tortured and forced to do things you should never have been exposed to. I told- I said, ‘let me find me him’ but they didn’t let- couldn’t let me go and I’m so sorry Bucky, I’m so sorry.” His shoulders heaved as he breathed deeply, a breakdown imminent.

“No, no, no Steve, what the- no, I know that- God, Steve, I.” Bucky struggled to find the words and Steve struggled to listen. Desperately, Bucky walked around him, acquired his hands, and clasped his own around them, squeezing them to pull him out of his demise. Prevent the disturbed waters from taking him.

He was too late.

“Please, please tell me what’s going on. With the train, the Valkyrie, the fucking knife- please talk to me Steve because I’m losing my mind over here,” he said gazing sincerely into his eyes and maintaining a hold on them.

Bucky looked guileless, a refugee caught in the crossfire. Steve couldn’t do that to him, not after everything. Shaking his head, he looked away and glanced at the door, urge to run vibrant. He ran from everything, but he couldn’t from this.

“It’s nothing Buck, don’t worry about it.” Prepared to walk calmly to his room, he only managed to scurry to the edge of the sofa which was closest to the Bucky before the other man exploded. Coming to an abrupt halt, his eyes widened.

“The hell it does Steve!” Bucky seethed, anger radiating from him like heat. “Anything that is making you reckless enough to get yourself killed is enough for me to lose my goddamn mind!”

Steve breathed heavy, eyes glancing around the dark room. Lightning burst like a bullet and illuminated it for a brief second. Suddenly, darkness overwhelmed the light. He didn’t flinch.

“A… A thing almost stabbed you and would have if it wasn’t for Barton- I saw you watch it come for you. I saw with my own two eyes you see it and do nothing. You just...stopped fucking moving. So, don’t tell me it’s nothing to worry over, when it comes to you I’ll worry until I’m no longer breathing. So stop telling me how to feel and start telling me what it is going on,” Bucky demanded.

Steve, a man who fabricated worlds and futures with his mere speech, a man who always had something to say, a man who was never a soldier but rather a leader, had nothing to say. His lips were sealed, and his last stitch was trembling ferociously. He willed it stay strong unlike him.

“Are you going to talk to me?”

He wanted to, oh how he craved to abolish the mess he created with a foolish mistake. But he couldn't, he just couldn’t utter a sound.

“Steve?”

Pushing back the rock lodged in his throat, he breathed feverishly, distant memories of an asthma attack coming through. He was fine. He was okay. It was only Bucky. He could do this. He could lie just this once. He could.

“Yeah Buck?” His voice trembled, and he damned it with all his might.

“Steve please...talk to me,” Bucky implored. “Please...Stevie, I’m begging you here.”

Waving it off, his thick voice said, “there’s nothing to talk about Bucky. Everything's fine, things are great.”

“No, they're not and I see that you're crumbling. We made a promise, don't you remember?”

“What promise?” he asked, at a loss.

From behind, a comforting voice relayed, “that no matter what happened, what was going to happen, or what would never happen, we would never treat the other like glass. That we owed the other what they deserved: the truth, even if it pained us to say it. Don't you remember?”

He did. Regardless of how hard his mind tried to push it aside, he recalled the moment vividly, reminiscent of a time much easier to stomach. Their promises were scarce and often forgotten, but this was fundamental to their relationship, a fixture into the others life. They maintained it until the fall. He remembered it all.

Swallowing a toxic breath, he nodded, admitting, “I do.”

“I’m re-issuing it. You won’t talk to me, don’t trust me anymore and I just...I need you Steve. I need you as much I need this air that I’m breathing.” Bucky sighed freely.

It was an oath, not just a feeble string of insignificant words. Steve couldn’t oppose that without opposing Bucky, and despite how he felt, he needed Bucky too. He may deserve better, but Steve wasn’t prepared to ruin it all. He just...couldn’t. His hands were tied.

Walking forward, he neared the corner, TV displayed on the wall his left. Here, the darkness swarmed him and concealed his imposing figure. Looking up, he met Bucky’s distressed gaze. He could do this. Speak and leave. That was all he owed.

“I’ll talk, but you can’t interrupt. Just…let me finish and then say what you have to.” Spew the hateful and disgusted remarks. Hesitantly, Bucky nodded. Steve sighed.

“When you fell from the train, I wasn’t doing too well. It was my fault, I just had to fuc-” his hands clenched into fists and squeezed. Breathing deeply, he released them slowly. “I just had to reach out to you and all of this- this shitshow never would’ve happened. Hydra would never have gotten you, all that pain could have been avoided, all that...hurt. I should have been more careful, why didn’t I think it through? I wasn’t the Captain or the friend you needed, and I am so fucking sorry Bucky. I am so sorry.”

Shaking his head, he cleared his eyes hastily and resumed, “I was in a- in a bad place when the Valkyrie went into the ice. I wasn’t allowed to look for you and I tried, I did everything I could to convince them to let me go but they wouldn’t and then. And then Howard found me a couple of days before the mission. And he said. And he said that there was blood but no body and...and I just stopped thinking all together.”

“I hit the Valkyrie in the Arctic because I couldn’t do anything else and. And I considered swimming, thinking I could go and look for you but, but everything froze, and I couldn’t escape, and I tried to, I really did but I was just too weak. Then when I wake up and I’m here, a place you would’ve loved and it’s just. Why did I survive? Why me? Why not you?”

“I just...I’ve tried to accept this as my home. But I can’t forget the war, the people we left behind, the me I left behind and...you suffered so much because of me,” his voice reduced to a whisper. “When the spear was coming to me I stopped thinking. Stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Figured that maybe this is the way I go, in battle like a soldier should. I don't know what happened.”

He didn't say anymore, opted for a silence that stifled the truth he said, ensuring nobody else would bear witness to it. Bucky stared at him, hard, the entire time. When he realised Steve wouldn't talk again, he nodded.

“I want to clarify one thing right: none of this,” he gestured to himself, “is your fault.” Steve opened his mouth to interrupt but Bucky cut him off with a swipe of his arm, shaking slightly. Initiating a light walk, he continued to talk. “What happened to me was never on your head. It’s on theirs-” Hydra. “So, if you want to blame someone, blame them. If they didn’t exist then Azzano, the Valkyrie, the train- none of it would have happened. None. All the mess is theirs to keep and I know they don’t regret it at all...but it doesn’t matter. I know and so do you. That’s all that does.”

He sighed and in front of Steve, less than an arm’s length apart. So close, cloaked slightly by the darkness and half in the light, something stirred in Steve, a thought which declared that Bucky looked beautiful. Sad and determined, he was a fighter who would never say no or give up. Steve adored him.

“Nobody is telling you to forget our past Steve. Doris and old man George and even Daisy are worth remembering, these people existed, and they were in your life. But...they're gone now. They’re gone, and we can’t go back and neither can they. We just have to remember them for who they were and what they did for us. Steve, I. I think you should join me in therapy-”

Before Bucky could continue he spewed, “no Bucky, I can’t.”

“I know, I know,” he soothed. “But just go and listen or talk about your day. It doesn’t matter. There’s the VA if you’re interested in that but just- anything please. Do this for yourself. You deserve to be happy, to be content, to feel powerful enough to control the ugly truth about our lives and you need to know...you’re not alone and you can get better. Please?”

“I don’t know…”

“Steve?” Bucky immersed himself in the darkness. “Can I touch you?” He nodded. “No one will know. No one will force you to do anything you don’t want to do, and no one will force you to speak, just listen if you want. But...you need to learn how to carry this baggage and that's something that Avengers and I can’t help you with unfortunately...we’re all a mess.”

It was true, they were a group of misfit individuals with a laundry list of issues. Blood painted their ledger red and the terrain on which they walked was drowning in blood, screwing with the tyres and engines so they never had an easeful journey. They were all the same.

“I just want to go back, I don’t want any of that,” Steve said in a low voice, vulnerable and unprotected.

Bucky’s face fell dramatically, reaching a point that Steve thought didn’t exist. Reeling Steve in and resting his head on Steve’s shoulder he confessed, “so do I, more than you can ever imagine.”

Wrapping his arms around Bucky’s thin waist, he pressed their bodies together like pages of closed book and nestled his head into the crook of Bucky’s neck. Breathing in loud and urgently, he inhaled the new scent that belonged the only person Steve needed and closed his eyes, focusing entirely on him. In the only place he could ever feel safe, Steve felt the lasts stich come undone and drape atop it’s fallen brothers.

In Bucky’s arms, he was shielded from most of its horrors and tightened his hold. He was completely broken down, destroyed. All that was left to do was rebuild.

“I really do love you, you know,” he clarified. “I know I don’t deserve you or your love, but I do...regardless.”

“Yeah? Well I love you too, punk. Probably always have since you make it so hard not to. We’ll sort this out.” Bucky’s voice simmered. “We will heal, and we will start to live, not just exist. I promise you Steve.”

“Shouldn’t I be promising you that given the circumstances?”

Bucky's voice vibrated through his shoulder blade. “You’re the protector and I’m the healer. This is written in the stars: I will always look after you as you will me. Hydra can do plenty, but they can’t change destiny, and ours are linked.”

Steve liked the sound of that. Their lives were intertwined.

“Till the end of the line?”

“Till the end of the line, sweetheart,” Bucky vowed.

**Author's Note:**

> give yourself a pat on the back. u have earned it my friend. 
> 
> tumblr:  bountifulsilences   
> twitter:  AwestruckBuck 


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